Bradbury Thompson

Topeka, Kansas, is not the first place one would expect to find

a modernist designer. Yet in the mid-1930s, as a student who

coveted copies of the urbane magazines Vanity Fair, Vogue,

and Harper’s Bazaar, Bradbury Thompson knew that his life’s

work would be committed to printing and the design of type

and image. What he could not predict was that so many of his

designs for magazines and books in the years that followed

would be valued for what they taught the profession. One

of his major contributions was as a designer and an editor

of Westvaco Inspirations from 1938 to 1962, a paper and

printing periodical sent to educators and art directors in all

disciplines; it featured alternatives to conventional design and

was a showcase for new illustration, typography, and posters.

Yet Westvaco Inspirations was more than just a periodic

report on the state of the art. It was a vehicle for Thompson

to experiment with printing, type, and color. Allowing his

typography to be playful or to mirror content with dynamic

juxtapositions using both modem and historical references,

Thompson sought to achieve clarity without forsaking vitality.

Throughout the many issues of Westvaco Inspirations his

approach was decidedly eclectic, giving equal weight to modem

and historical references. Thompson was also art director of

Mademoiselle and design director of ArtNews in the decades

following World War II; and he designed the formats for three

dozen magazines, including Smithsonian. Thompson has

designed over one hundred United States postage stamps. In

these he has distilled history and emotion in a visual form

of haiku.

born 1911Introduction and Interview by Steven Heller

This spread from Westvaco

Inspirations exemplifies two

areas of graphic design in which

Bradbury Thompson has been a

major innovator: photographic

reproduction and typography. A

typographic game, “Run your eyes

around these pages,” is played to

show how rapidly our eyes respond

to the unexpected. The greyhounds

also dash around the page in two,

three, and four colors, reinforcing

the movement of the typography.

Westvaco Inspirations 198 1954

letterpress frontispiece: 12 x 9 format

and Westvaco Inspirations 177 1949

“Run Your Eyes” letterpress pp.

3530-3531: 12 x 9 format Published by

Westvaco Corporation, New York

Graphic Design in America

three

Interview

As demonstrated in the opening

spread from the Book of Genesis

in Thompson’s Washburn College

Bible, setting the type for its

prose-poetry in phrases clarifies

the meaning of the text. Sixty-six

works of art are illustrated in this

Bible, which was commissioned

by a college in Topeka, Kansas.

‘Adam and Eve in the Garden of

Eden, from the collection of the

Mauritshuis, The Hague, was

painted in 1620 by Peter Paul

Rubens and Jan Breughel the

Elder.

The Washburn College Bible 1979

three volumes pp. 2-3: 14 x 10 format

Published by Washburn College,

Topeka, Kansas

Bradbury Thompson

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In the late 1950s I was asked to provide Westvaco an idea for a

gift which they could present to their clients at Christmastime.

I thought, here is a paper company that produces the products

on which books are printed; and I offered to assist them with

the publication of classic books. Therefore, the first book,

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, was

designed with classic restraint, centered type, and margins.

For the next, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,

and Other Sketches by Mark Twain, I gained the courage to

do it in a modern spirit, like the design I had been using in

Westvaco Inspirations. I wanted to break from the traditional

characteristics of the 1867 first edition, justified spacing and

the use of cap letters, so I went to a flush left-ragged right type

arrangement. Although my book design was based on classic

models, there was no reason why one should be forever tied

to tradition, and this method brought new vitality to a classic

text. Tradition and new ideas can be reconciled on the basis of

appropriate typefaces and illustrations.

In 1963 I really broke free from traditional book restraints with

the design for American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons. The

type is all flush left-ragged right, with overhanging heads on

the left and asymmetrical placement of other design elements.

I used classical illustrations but deployed them the way one

might in a magazine. In a different vein, for an Edgar Allan Poe

story called “The Balloon Hoax” I researched a copy of The Sun

newspaper from 1844 and designed the format in the fashion

of old newspapers, using engravings of the period. Unlike a

purely classical rendering, this approach was imbued with

a modern, eclectic spirit. For the design of Stephen Crane’s

The Red Badge of Courage we die-cut a bullet hole through

the book, and printed what appear to be splatters of blood on

Since 1969 Bradbury Thompson

has not only designed a number

of United States postage stamps,

but he has influenced the work of

many others in this field. In his 1982

commemorative stamp for America’s

libraries (shown actual size) he uses

letter forms from a 1523 alphabet

drawn by the French aesthetician

Geofroy Tory for Champ Fleury, a

treatise on Roman lettering.

Graphic Design in America

seven

random pages. This idea came from stories about Bibles and

other objects saving the lives of men in battle during the Civil

War. This was a way of bringing realism to the design. I made

the outside of the book look like an old cartridge case, and

instead of printing the title on the spine, I put “Stephen Crane,”

as if that case were a diary. For the interior I retained the classic

book design of that time, centered heading and justified type, to

provide realism.

The Washburn College Bible project came about because I

had been a consultant to the Field Enterprises Educational

Corporation, which asked me if I would like to design a

Bible. Of course I wanted to, but it needed to be on my aesthetic

and typographic terms.

First, I set the type flush left, ragged right, which would be

a completely modern interpretation of Gutenberg’s original.

Then, I realized that once set this way the short verses would

often come up too short. I often had one word left over in the

last line, so I made some adjustments. I found that by setting it

in phrases I could emphasize the rhythm of the human voice,

and help make the archaic English of the King James Version

of 1611 perfectly clear. If one reads this version in its original

justified form, it’s hard to comprehend. When I put it into

phrases beautiful things happened. At first I made them too

long, and they weren’t effective. So I shortened them, starting

with “In the beginning” or “God created the Heavens and the

Earth” as one line. In the early Bibles typographers did not use

quotation marks because they had not been invented, so the

editors of 1611 began a sentence wherever there was a quotation

by writing “And God said” or “Behold.” As short phrases

The Red Badge of Courage by

Stephen Crane frontispiece: 8 1/2 x

5 1/2 format Published by Westvaco

Corporation as part of the American

Classic Book Series, 1968

these were functional and vital aids to understanding. But my

approach seems appropriate when one recalls that the King

James Version was written during the time of Shakespeare,

when eloquent dialogues were made on stage.

I was also determined to bring great art into this book: here was

a chance to have works of art begin each chapter. The caption

on the verso side of each picture not only gives all the practical

information, including artist, date, and collection, but it also

provides the verse from the Bible that inspired the artist to

paint the picture in the first place. This was actually a modern

publishing technique, for it was my hope that the reader would

be persuaded to turn to that text. If the job of a designer is to

make material more understandable, the Bible is the ultimate

challenge. I was pleased because I was able to include in this

English, or Protestant, textual version many great works of art

from the Catholic Italian Renaissance. And more important,

I came to realize that three-fourths of the Bible is the Hebrew

Old Testament. So I was happy to be joining all of these related,

but disassociated, religions and eras into one homogeneous entity.

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Bradbury Thompson